Jackie Robinson, Empathy and Shattering Stereotypes

Missy and I watched the movie 42 last week. As you probably already know, Jackie Robinson was the first Black player in Major League Baseball. As you might guess, it wasn’t a smooth transition and Robinson endured a lot of hate and persecution along the way.

This movie could be a case study in how to shatter stereotypes. When a stereotype is first challenged, people typically cling to it more tightly than before and defend it even more vigorously. You see this in the movie as the insults start to fly, the boo’s of the crowd and very public curses and excoriation from opposing managers. The question at that point is whether the stereotype will hold true or be proven false. In other words, if Jackie Robinson reacts harshly (even if justified) it feeds the stereotype and the stereotype continues.

There was a defining scene in the movie when the opposing team’s manager is yelling crude remarks at Robinson while he is at bat. Robinson gets so mad that he walks off the field, away from the public eye, into the tunnel and repeatedly hits his bat against the wall. As he slumps to the floor of the tunnel, the tears and sobs begin. It was the moment everything changed. Aaron had made a choice and he was reaping the terrible but temporary consequences of his wise and humbling decision. Instead of retaliating with what would have been justifiable anger, he swallowed his pride and his anger for a bigger purpose.

Here is why that is important. If just once Robinson shouts back…just one violent reaction and the whole thing is blown. Once he acts violently, even justifiably, he fits the stereotype. When that happens, the stereotype is allowed to continue…even increase. But, if Robinson is respectful. If he is kind. If he ignores it and plays the game the best he can, like the bat he beat against the wall, the power of the stereotype is shattered.

Once he endures and doesn’t retaliate, Robinson becomes the victim which then allows the crowd to see him as something deeper than a victim…they start to see him as human. The insults no longer make sense. The booing just doesn’t seem to fit, much less feel right. People start seeing the injustice for what it really is and they became empathetic. Empathy has a way of shattering stereotypes because it is hard to hold empathy and a competing stereotype in your head and in your heart at the same time. One has to go. Thanks to Jackie Robinson for keeping his integrity, doing the tough thing, and helping to change a nation.

You didn’t actually mean paying attention to the topic? Well, in that case,it may be an admirable thing to shatter some culturally-inherited human-imposed stereotypes, but the problem of the moment for the Faith is that there are strong humanistic pressures amongst the body of those calling themselves Christians to demolish stereotypes that God, thru the Scriptures, established for the good of people and families. Many of the moral stereotypes are there thru God’s instruction. What kind of Christian(?) would set them aside because THEY judge them to be antiquated and inconvenient? Maybe ‘Christians’ who wrongly think that God, though willing to put up with a lot in order to save souls, is a democracy [Mark 12: 29-30]; ‘Christians’ whose egos are incapable of taking to heart, Paul’s message that although we are not under the law, we should constrain our freedoms if there is a danger of influencing others to do evil – and the last I looked, it was God, by dent of the Scriptures, not mankind either singly or in a pack, who sets the goal-posts as to what constitutes good and evil. It’s a sobering thought that the Lord has chosen this particular time for the buried witness of His punishment on the immoral Cities of the Plain to reach the light of day [see Collins & Scott’s “Discovering the City of Sodom”, published this year].